Headphone recommendations needed

[WolfAngel]

Hey everyone looking to upgrade my gaming  experience.  Currently using Razer’s Man’OWar 7.1 wired and Wireless headsets for gaming. To me they are great as long as Razer’s synapses is working properly and detecting “apps” that I’m using.  Currently I’m looking at Headphones from Blue yeti Aka  Blue designs Sadie headphones. The headphones don’t need to have a microphone built in, as I just got a blue yeti microphone as a Christmas gift, and I’m enjoying that. Any recommendations would be great/user reviews to go along with them. I greatly appreciate everyone’s help with this minor issue, and look forward to getting a great new pair of headphones.

[Kalm_Traveler]

Budget?

 

Just being honest, gaming headsets do not have audiophile-level headphones. Some sound better than others and this also doesn't mean they are objectively "bad", but comparing gaming headset sound to actual high-quality headphones is kind of night and day different since they were designed for very different purposes given the price points.

 

Anywho, being somewhat new to higher-end headphone audio myself I can recommend both of the popular Massdrop models - Sennheiser HD6XX and AKG K7XX depending on what you primarily use them for. The AKG's are generally a little better for gaming because you can hear positional sounds more decisively, but the Sennheiser's are a little bit better overall for music listening as far as instrument separation and not sounding overly bass or treble heavy.

 

That being said, I have both and use the AKG's with a Modmic 5 for my 'gaming headset' through a Mayflower Electronics ARC DAC/ADC/amplifier unit on the HEDT (different setup for music listening on that same rig), and currently using the Sennheiser's through a Schiit Fulla 2 DAC/amplifier on my mainstream rig because I already had them laying around and they sound great.

 

Both of them cost $200 USD on Massdrop, and you don't 'need' a DAC/amp for them if you have decent onboard audio on your motherboard but definitely do not try to listen to anything through case front panel jacks as the cables that connect them to your motherboard through the case pick up a LOT of electrical noise that will make any headphone sound worse.

[WolfAngel]

Budget is any really not trying to spend $500 but willing to if need be. Thanks for your recommendations I greatly appreciate it. Currently playing Rainbow 6 siege and PUBG so hearing player positioning would be ideal for me. As for music I’m into a lot of heavy metal and rock, but I listen to everything in the long run. I’ll deffenitly look into getting AKG’s.

[Kalm_Traveler]

7 minutes ago, WolfAngel said:

Budget is any really not trying to spend $500 but willing to if need be. Thanks for your recommendations I greatly appreciate it. Currently playing Rainbow 6 siege and PUBG so hearing player positioning would be ideal for me. As for music I’m into a lot of heavy metal and rock, but I listen to everything in the long run. I’ll deffenitly look into getting AKG’s.

Yeah I would just start with the headphones going to the rear IO motherboard jack and see how you like the sound. 

 

If they don't sound amazing, you can buy decent USB DAC/amp units for about $100 or less (the little piece of Schiit I'm using on my smaller rig is $99 i think) and that will make them sound their best. 

 

You could buy separate DAC and amplifier but that costs about $100 each and I'm not sure you'd even notice any difference without spending a ton more for even better headphones. 

 

Then you end up like me hunting down a discontinued $1100 DAC/amp from France and its matching discontinued $1200 headphones from the UK because "what if it really does sound better?" (note: it does, but not $2000 better, maybe 50% at most). 

 

Audio gear as a hobby gets very expensive very quickly. 

[WolfAngel]

I can tell lol, not making it a hobby just trying to up my games a bit improve my set up little by little my Man’OWars work and the wired ones come with a usb that makes them and any other headset/headphones etc plugged into them 7.1  surround, but trying to use Razer  synapsis 2.0 with their 3.0 seam to conflict and fight one another even if 3.0 dosent support any of my other razer products. Currently trying out a Microsoft app called “ear trumpet” to use over Razer’s  synapsis...it kinda works but I feel like I have to almost have any game sound over a safe threshold and almost blow my ears off to get the sound of player foot steps/movement right. But if I watch a stream or YouTube video of someone playing the same game all

their sounds are perfect. Foot steps loud gunshots perfect volume not going to have your ears ringing for days. Then I look at their system to see their headphones and they got almost $700 headphones from their  sponsors or some sheeit like that...lol

[Exaco]

Headphones: HE4XX or 6XX ( Massdrop )
Differences
Review/Comparison by @Max_Settings : 

AMP: Schiit Magni 3 or JDS Labs Atom
DAC: Schiit Modi 3 or JDS Labs OL DAC

Total: ~400$

End-Game. And you don't need to spend thousands anymore, anything above probs won't be good performance/price ratio.

[Max_Settings]

5 hours ago, Exaco said:

End-Game. And you don't need to spend thousands anymore, anything above probs won't be good performance/price ratio.

Well that is not necessarily true. IDK if I would call anything in that review endgame. But price to performance isn't really how audio works. If that were the case you would never buy anything except the Koss KSC75.

[Exaco]

49 minutes ago, Max_Settings said:

Well that is not necessarily true. IDK if I would call anything in that review endgame. But price to performance isn't really how audio works. If that were the case you would never buy anything except the Koss KSC75.

Well, what i mean by price/performance ratio is like if you have 500$ headphones and you decide to upgrade to 1500$ ones u wont get 3x better sound, more like 10-30% better which is not really worth investing 1000$ for such small sound upgrade ( especially considering these will be used for gaming ), meanwhile if u upgrade from these 17$ Koss KSC75 to something like 6XX for 199$ then its day and night improvement in all aspects and totally worth the money. 

I know when it comes to headphone hobby the money doesn't really matter anymore it just becomes the pursuit of perfect sound or just simply collecting headphones. It's like hobby of watches, u pay 20k for a nice watch just because you like it and not because it shows the time better.

[Max_Settings]

3 minutes ago, Exaco said:

17$ Koss KSC75 to something like 6XX for 199$ then its day and night and totally worth the money. 

Actually not really.